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Have you considered writing an original IP fulfilling your creative vision rather than copying WoD? It doesn't hold a monopoly on urban fantasy. And if you do an original IP, then you can sell RPG books for profit too.

No. I suck at original creativity - and I love making my own puzzle from estabilished setting and franchises remodelling them as it suits me.
My creative vision is WOD trimmed and reshaped according to my vision :3

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I second that. Might as well make your own thing if you liked World of Darkness so much but hate the wokeness and other nonsense it became infested with over the years.

Nah. It wouldn't be honest. I don't want new urban fantasy setting - I want WoD with my fixes.
If I tried to override it I'd get some pathetic parody of intelectual property like Daniel D. Fox - Zweihander (I mean rules are different enough) but pantheon of gods and Chaos powers is just pathethic.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 05:44:51 PM

Yes. I agree.
In fact I was planning on making own itteration of WOD (mix of oWOD and nWOD) based on more feudal principles, precisely because as right-winger I'm tired by all conspiracy freaks in our community, claiming there are some BIG THEM RUNNING THE WORLD, which aside of my personal dibelief I also consider kinda boring setting-wise.
So for me scattering and multipling supernatural communities both "good" and "evil" is fine - I'm generally hard into later retcon of Technocracy as much less powerful organisation as it seems - still very powerful but nowhere close to running the world (and definitely some good clash between their sects), Vampires divided into multiple political groups - both taken from Masquerade and Requiem, and so multiple cross-species groups.

World of Chaos that many would like to control, but it's just to big to be grasped by any single player.

That I suppose is neither really left- or right-wing counter-culture, but then what can I say - I'm feudalist

Have you considered writing an original IP fulfilling your creative vision rather than copying WoD? It doesn't hold a monopoly on urban fantasy. And if you do an original IP, then you can sell RPG books for profit too.

Some of the best play-testing is taking the module/game to a con and running it there. Tickets for games sell out ASAP, and your table will always be full. You have no idea who will show up, but usually, several people know each other. You can gather feedback both by watching how separate groups deal with the challenges presented, and at the end of the session, solicit direct feedback.

For me the order of design is this...

1) Concept (you've said you've got this worked out).

2) Design a core task resolution system: when a character tries to do something, how do you determine success or failure. dice total vs. difficulty? Opposed rolls? Percentage checks? Success counting dice pool? card draws? trait bidding system?

It doesn't have to be the same for everything, but having the right system can either work with (ex. using playing cards for a Wild West game can be quite thematic) or against (ex. rolling on a table for a LARP-based game) your concept.

Also important at this stage is figuring out odds of success using your system for an average unskilled person, a skilled expert and the best-of-the best as these will help you gauge the values you need for attributes, skills, difficulties, etc.

3) What does a character in your setting need to make checks for?

Make a list of what you think most characters will need to make checks for and, if there's a bunch, rank them in terms of how common those checks are (numeric, stars, whatever works).

Then take your list and start grouping tasks together into similar categories with an eye towards creating three to eight "piles." These are going to the attributes your system needs with individual tasks becoming either skills (for a highly detailed system), parts of a skill (for a less detailed system) or a general task (for a system that doesn't want the detail of skills at all or where you think skill should never apply).

Pay attention to particularly small piles and/or those with many low-ranked tasks and for piles that contain lots of high-ranked tasks. Those could end up as universal "dump stats" or "super stats" respectively. Try moving some tasks around until the piles are fairly even if you want your attributes to be about equally useful.

4) Make your attribute and skill lists and figure out any other traits you're going to need (ex. hit points and damage to measure the success of combat task checks) and how to determine those (ex. From one or more attributes or skills, randomly rolled, set value).

5) Figure out how a character is built. If you've got superstats or dump stats you should look at either random generation (ex. old school D&D) or different costs using build points (ex. HERO System). If reasonably balanced with each other, then a more general point-buy or attribute array system might be where you look (or go completely random since you'll still theoretically get something playable on average).

A Lifepath system can be used in relation to any of those.

Your concept will help a lot here. If campaigns are intended to be short or characters fairly disposable, then random generation can speed up creation by removing a lot of choices from the player. Games where players will expect to be using the same character for a long haul then giving them more control via point buys or arrays will make them more invested in the resulting character.

6) Now start filling in all the supporting details: opponents, allies, terrain, equipment, special abilities, etc. For these sub-systems you just need to run through steps 1-5 within a more focused area (spellcasting for example) to figure out what's needed and then figure out how that attaches to the main system.

At least this is the approach I've followed.

might i recommend the D6 system by west end games, the pdfs for star wars and the later produced fantasy/adventure/scifi are available for free and they are released under the ogl of 3e D&D fame. I'd considered making a fantasy setting for D6 fantasy myself but the more i look at it the more my ambition gets scaled back to just making a companion or supplement for such, since all thats really missing for it IS a setting or a more nailed down companion book that presents things more hardline than the free form toolkit format D6 is presented as. They tried to make it a sort of unisystem fantasy/scifi/adventure ruleset toolkit, and it reads as such, making it hard for many to see its true potential and leaving them full of questions, questions whose answers are "it depends on the game/setting/genre/tone/them you wish to run, it can do anything yo".

Even r/KotakuInAction blacklists OAG, and with good reason.

Sorry but the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, and overlooking genuine racism/antisemitism just because someone aligns with you in other areas is a huge part of the problem.

You're right that "enemy of my enemy =/= friend"

But in 2020, words like "racism" and "antisemitism" are nonsense noise. It's just "I don't want that person to speak".

I don't know OAG, but he can't be any more despicable than the clowns the MSM celebrates.

Are you building a new system from scratch?
Or using an existing system?
Or modifying an existing system?

And if you're building from scratch, what systems are you imitating or rejecting? Few things are new under the sun.